House subcommittee punts on bipartisan after-school life counselors bill

A highly favored counselor bill from the Virginia Senate to make more volunteer after-school life counselors available died Tuesday in a 4-2 House subcommittee vote.

Democrats on the House Education subcommittee expressed concern that the bill creates the potential for religious indoctrination and constitutional issues raised by the ACLU of Virginia. 

The subcommittee suggested Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Spotsylvania, who sponsored Senate Bill 859, consult with the ACLU about the concerns as the General Assembly session draws to an end next week.

“Madam Chair, I’m not going to meet with the ACLU,” Reeves said.

He added that any constitutional issue with the legislation would have been addressed in the Senate. The Senate Education and Health Committee and the full Senate unanimously passed Reeves’ bill. He also pointed out that the House Education subcommittee’s attorney found no issues.

“It’s the first I’ve heard of the ACLU saying anything about this bill,” Reeves said, adding that there is no intent in the bill to subject students to any religious ideology.

Under SB 859, school boards would be permitted, through their own policy, to allow people or groups to volunteer counseling services at school after regular school hours.

Reeves said the bill would require parents to agree to their child being counseled after school, and for school boards to publicly post a list of available volunteer counselors annually. Volunteer candidates would also have to undergo similar background checks as public school employees and to be religiously neutral.

In an email obtained by the Mercury, Chris Kaiser, policy director for ACLU of Virginia, recommended the House Education subcommittee remove references to “religious,” “spiritual” services and “chaplins” from the bill.

“Hiring or otherwise allowing chaplains in public schools would amount to state-sponsored religion and lead to religious proselytization and coercion of students, as well as other violations of the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions,” Kaiser wrote. 

Kaiser said in deciding which chaplains to hire or accept as volunteers, schools will inherently give preference to particular denominations, violating the “clearest command” of the establishment clause: “[O]ne religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” 

“Schools that adopt policies under SB 859 and decline to accept chaplains of minority religions, even controversial ones, will place themselves at great risk of liability,” Kaiser wrote.

After being questioned by the House Education subcommittee, Reeves said he did not believe his bill violated the establishment clause under the First Amendment, which prohibits favoring one religion over another.

The subcommittee’s counsel also stated that Reeves was “careful” when crafting the bill to prevent any clause violation.

The bill states that no policy should allow for any teaching of any specific religion or political beliefs and school officials should not weigh counseling services that would be perceived as supporting any religious beliefs.

Further the bill adds that each policy created by a school board would be required to be “neutral with regard to any religious preference, affiliation, or belief, or lack thereof, in establishing criteria for approving any individual or group to provide any such volunteer student life counseling or support services and in establishing any guidelines or policies for the provision of any such volunteer student life counseling or support services.”

This article first appeared on Virginia Mercury and is republished here with permission. Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence.